Since starting our national virtual tour business, my husband and I have always said that we were just one phone call away from changing everything. We have had some amazing breaks but for the first five years of our business, we really had to hustle for every job we got. Because we specialize in healthcare virtual tours and vacation rental virtual tours, we have been lucky enough for some of those jobs to be big ones but even with that, it’s been all about the hustle.

At the beginning of 2013, I made a concerted effort to become more systemized in my marketing efforts. I decided that I would work from an objective list rather than set specific goals. Before I would set a goal to call 100 people a week but the challenge of our business is that if one of those calls said yes, then I was done calling and we were in the car to go shoot a regional hospital or hotel group and my To-Do list got set aside. Last year, I set up an operating frame work that gives me daily objectives and weekly objectives. Instead of waiting until I had an office day and trying to crank out cold calls, I set my minimum criteria to contact 5 new leads per week – one in each of our core disciplines — and to touch one contact every day. This could be an existing client or a lead that is in my pipeline.

By making my objective list manageable, I have been able to do almost all of it every day. The program I use to track my activities is called Opus Domini and the great thing about it is that certain tasks renew every day and certain tasks carry forward until I delete them. This means that I wake up with a basically clean slate each day other than the important items that I didn’t get to the day before.

I also became fanatical about using Sales Force instead of keeping handwritten notes. At the end of the day, I transfer any hand written notes into SalesForce and throw away the pages that I wrote on. This systematic, methodical approach has literally transformed our business.

Instead of managing Tasks in SalesForce, I now manage my Opportunity Pipeline and update it every day. I am the world’s worst about writing a task in SalesForce then forgetting to log into SalesForce so that when I do, I have 30 reminders. Things get lost that way but when I am looking at the Opportunity Pipeline every day and seeing the dollar signs next to those opportunities, it helps me to prioritize my activities and create tasks that are appropriate and timely rather than simple busy work.

The amazing thing is that this approach has caused our business to explode!! We were successful before but now our business runs like a well oiled machine and doesn’t have the ups and downs that we used to experience. We started 2014 with an opportunity pipeline that has 125% more pending and potential business than we made in 2013! We started the year with our biggest job of all time — photographing 115 vacation rental virtual tours in Charleston, SC during January and February. We have had one of our busiest months for real estate in Illinois despite the fact that they have had record snowfalls and the coldest winter in over 30 years.

Napolean Hill said “”When Riches begin to come they come so quickly and in such great abundance that one wonders where they have been hiding during all those lean years.” The key to getting to that tipping point for us was working diligently during the leaner years and trusting that the efforts would pay off.

In this era of internet exposure today’s home buyers and businesses want stimulating visuals that captivate their attention. Our radio controlled RC Helicopters provide close range high definition aerial images at up to 14 megapixel granularity and should be easily able to print up to 8×10 images with excellent results. We recently were able to shoot a 4 image panorama 60 feet off the ground and deliver an outstanding 11×17 image to our client.

Windy day? … No problem! Our quad copters are all GPS enabled. When we get the shot we want we can focus on camera work and our quads just hover until we move to the next needed shot.

Get your aerial shots while we are out shooting your listing for a virtual tour and we will save you a bundle of cash. Aerial photography starts at just $100 when shot with a virtual tour. Send us an email message at exposureelements@gmail.com. Text message or phone us at 408-431-0461 to schedule your professional aerial photography and virtual tour.

RoboTour is a Huge time-saver for me! The crew always does their best and my scenes are stitched just the way I like them, with NO stitching errors! Everyone at RTV is great to work with and they always let me know if they have any questions about any particular 360 panorama.

While I don’t use RoboTour all the time, I do find that it is extremely helpful when I have a large order or a very busy week and just don’t have the time to stitch everything together. RoboTour is like having a virtual assistant there ready to go all of the time!

How does it work? It’s simple. I just upload the virtual tour photos and they take it from there. It leaves me free to do my invoicing, photo editing, and schedule more photography appointments. If you haven’t used RoboTour yet, you should definitely give a try! Thanks RTV.

We expect to see objects in photos appear as they would in real life. When objects in photos appear as they do in real life, all is right with the world and we can breathe easy.

Join me, Ben Knorr for second IMAGE webinar in this series, Methods to Maximize Your Profit, as we talk about the importance of and how to quickly straighten your photos. Jim Blue, from BlueLava Media, will as join us and share the importance of straightening your photos as well as the methods he uses to make these edits quick.

As virtual tour photographers we make our living off of professional photography and virtual tours. Like any business, when we sell our photography and virtual tours services, we need to make a profit. I am sure that most of us would like to make as much profit as we can. Well, don’t you?

In this IMAGE webinar series “Methods to Maximize Your Profit” we are going to focus on photography methods that directly affect your profit margins. Whether you shoot quick turn virtual tours for a lower price or you shoot high end property virtual tours and business virtual tours, we will address many different photography methods that will enhance everyone’s profitability through this IMAGE webinar series.

Photography has been my passion since my teenage years. Over the years it has become my hobby, my job, my profession. During my college years I have spend many hours lost in the darkness of photo lab’s darkroom… From developing film to printing, from black and white to color… eventually the transition came from film to digital.

photo taken with Nikon N60, kodak tri-x film, fall 2000

Over the years I photographed people, events, buildings and locations for work related purposes and my own satisfaction. Although, I have to admit that I always enjoyed photographing architecture and landscapes more than photographing events and people (nothing against people). I did not realize it until few years ago, it was when I came upon an idea to offer my own professional photography services. XL Visions was born – Exceptional Solutions for Real Estate and Business demands with Professional Photography, Fusion Virtual Tours and Innovative Marketing.

photo taken with Nikon N60, kodak tri-x film, fall 2000

I am very dedicated and passionate about my work, my photography, about the quality of the images. Maybe sometimes even too much. When one would think that smaller project, a less expensive, with less value in it would be treated and photographed as one. I still pay same amount of attention to detail, photograph it just like I would photograph a “castle” because I have respect and hold to the fact that something with no value to one could be a treasure to another.

photo taken with Nikon D300, RAW format, fall 2013

Now, I am passionate about virtual tour photography and I believe in my skills, but I needed something to complete and support my services, my business. This is why I found and chose RTV – The Leaders in Virtual Tour Software, National Photography Services and amazing training services. RTV are the real deal!! Their support is simply phenomenal. A few years ago, when RTV released their new virtual tour system called Fusion I knew this was the tool, the missing link that I was looking for.

main screen of Fusion Virtual Tour

A Fusion Virtual Tour is more than just a virtual tour. It’s been build on over a decade of RTV’s industry expertise. It is an amazing media presentation of HD photographs, panoramas, video and audio with many powerful and innovative marketing and sharing options. Together with the Fusion virtual tour software package and my photography services I bring you everything a real estate agent or business owner could ask for when it comes to marketing their listings and properties.

Today, I feel very proud and confident to be able to offer endless possibilities to help promote your real estate listing, property, hotel, country club, restaurant, school… I think you get the picture now.